Tabula Rasa
by mockingjayne
Summary: "We had only just tiptoed across the line of friendship tonight, and now I was catapulting us so far back to the starting point, that we'd likely end up at the finish line."


"Am I Taylor Shaw?" I desperately spit out at him. Because the only thing I can think to ask in a haze of confusion is how deep my betrayal runs…err, her betrayal, this woman that I refuse to believe is actually me, despite the strikingly similar looks and message speaking directly to me. I can't believe anything she's saying, not truly sure that she wasn't coerced into delivering this message. And did she ever mention the name of the man who had this phone?

No. She hadn't. For all I know this…Oscar, this man who's visited my dreams several times over the last few months, demanding attention, could be attempting to deceive me. He could be the enemy we're fighting against.

 _We._

I adjust myself, uncomfortably, on the wooden plank situated beneath me. Pain shoots through the muscles of my wrists, twisting like the knife of treachery running up my arms, straight into my shoulders. I visibly wince, but don't dare take my eyes off the duplicitous man in front of me.

He stares at me like a deer caught in the headlights of a truck careening straight towards him. I guess I am the truck in this situation, though given the information I'd just been delivered, I could very well be the deer - frozen stupefied, scared, confused.

Clutching the phone, he glances down, breaking eye contact with me, a slight frown forming on his lips.

"Am I Taylor Shaw?" I repeat, this time more forceful, less desperate. But as the words slip out of my mouth, I wonder if I truly want to know. There's no turning back once he answers.

And I can't decide which answer, _yes or no_ , would be worse.

My mind feels like it's splintering off into twelve different directions - the pain coursing through every muscle of my body, the questions wrapping their noose tighter and tighter around my neck, the fear of not just Oscar's answer but of Kurt's eventual reaction and the consequences of this fateful night weighing heavily on my chest.

I take a deep breath, slowly exhaling, hoping a bit of my anxiety will dispel with my breath, alleviating just a tiny bit of my sheer terror radiating off of me.

"It's complicated," he reluctantly admits down at his feet, refusing to look at me.

My upper lip begins to shake, whether from the water having soaked my body, the bitter cold settling in, seeping into my bones, leaving a violent shaking or the absolute frustration of an illusive answer I've been attempting to answer for as literally as long as I can remember.

"What do you mean…it's complicated…?" I tremble out through chattering teeth.

Suddenly, a ring trills through the echoing building. My head whips to the side, looking to find the source. This sends another wave of pain rolling down my upper body, and this time I can't control the whelp that escapes.

In my peripheral, through squinting eyes of pain, I see Oscar approaching me, hands up, as if he's liable to spook me - I _guess I am the deer after all_ \- though I'm not sure what he expects me to do tied up. A sign that perhaps he knows just how lethal I really am, more so than even I do.

He pulls out a pocketknife, and I flinch, my insides twisting, my eyes searching the hollow room for anything I could use to defend myself, my instincts kicking in. But before I can do anything, my restraints come loose, and I realize he's only allowing me my freedom.

I slowly sit up, encasing my now raw wrists, rubbing carefully, the cuts stinging me back to attention, as he continues to stand over me, knife out, looking at me with trepidation.

"Thanks," I mumble out, feeling compelled to show him some gratitude, given how he keeps looking me. It's a similar look to how Kurt first gazed at me when he found out that I was…maybe Taylor. That look of expectation, the one full of hope that maybe I'll remember the key piece to the puzzle that'll somehow trigger the the part of me that once loved them. And it was this incessant search for the one they lost that leaves me feeling inadequate, incomplete. Like being me, the person I am currently, isn't quite enough.

However, the main difference between the two men is that It scared me half to death to be on the receiving end of that stare from Kurt, because for as much as I recognized that I could never live up to this image he had of me, and not really wanting to, I knew, even back then, that I wanted to be _something_ to him. I knew that I wanted him to look at me for what I was, someone that while could never be the part of his past that haunted him for most of his life, but rather the present woman who sought him out above everyone else, who craved the comfort he offered and the feeling of just being safe in his presence. And who could've anticipated I'd eventually be the one that defied her own security detail just to have a moment that was purely selfish, yet mutually appreciated, if that slack jaw stare was any indication when I left him.

And I had.

I don't know when exactly the look changed, perhaps it wasn't ignited all at once, but rather a slow burn, contained, until fully ignited by the spark of my lips sweeping across his own.

A small grin plays across my amused face.

Because leave it to Kurt to offer me some sort of relief, comfort, safety stretched across the form of a memory in even the darkest of places.

It's the ringing noise that wakes me from my temporary train of thought, extinguishing the heat, leaving the piercing chill to freeze over, shattering the net of safety as well the silence strung between myself and the stranger peering down at me, releasing the onset of treachery to take over again. The reminder that the comfort I'd felt from Kurt would likely be something left in the past, in the form of the memories I'd managed to create, once he found out what I'd done, _what she'd done_.

"This wasn't part of the plan," Oscar blurts out. And a part of me thinks that he isn't referring to this impromptu meeting between us. Perhaps it's the dejected tone he uses that tips me off.

"I wouldn't know," I bitterly reply. Not quite sure what to say at this point. He's not offering up any answers and if he's waiting for me to suddenly attach some sort of nostalgic longing for him, he's going to be waiting for quite a while.

I find myself, not for the first time tonight, wondering what the feeling was attached to the blank memories of this man that often flashed to me like pieces of a puzzle. Because while I can see the images, hear the words, the emotion is lost on me. It's as if I'm watching a movie that's been spliced together and I''m starting from the middle every single time - hearing the words being recited, seeing the actions of the images, but the intent, the motivation behind everything that happens is lost in translation, and all I'm left with is a flat version of something that could've been loaded with feeling.

"You better get that," he gestures to the phone, my phone, resting on the ground where Carter had been standing. "He's probably worried."

xxxx

I wrap my arms more tightly around myself, attempting to warm my freezing form, but the crisp air penetrates through my weak barrier, leaving a violent shaking to course through me.

With each step I take, the further into the fog I wander.

After being released from my restraints, Oscar had offered me no more explanation than before, only suggesting that it would benefit everyone involved, if I didn't mention the mysterious man with the video message of my long haired doppelgänger delivering my likely treason to the very people I'd grown to trust the most.

The guilt immediately began to naw at my insides, destroying me from the inside out. The team had never given me a reason not to trust them, and while I knew that they had my back in the field, and were friendly enough to me, taking me out for beers and such, to ask them to trust me after finding out that I was the woman orchestrating the chaos that had been sprung on them? There were some lines you didn't cross, and something told me we weren't _that_ close.

And then there was Kurt. How would he react? We had only just tiptoed across the line of friendship tonight, and now I was catapulting us so far back to the starting point, that we'd likely end up at the finish line.

Another chill runs down my spine, as tears gather in my eyes, threatening to fall - making it the second time that night that water attempted to break me into submission, drawing my weakness to the forefront.

The adrenaline of the tonight's events having worn off and rather than panic seeping from me like before, I'm drowned in a smaze of murky decisions, an imperceptible identity. My instinct takes over, sluggishly moving me forward, dragging my boots along the concrete, one foot in front of the other.

Alone.

I don't even realize where my perfidious feet have led me, until I'm standing outside the same building I'd left earlier that night. Before, a cocky grin had graced my face, every nerve-end tingling me into giddy, unaware, and unprepared for the ambush that was about to wreck what little of a life I'd managed to make for myself.

As if on autopilot, I'm off the elevator and knocking on his door before my brain can even catch up to my actions.

He answers the door on the second knock, almost as if he expected me to show up on his doorstep. His eyes are alight with relief at my figure standing before him, but quickly changes to that of panic upon seeing the state I'm in - likely pale as a sheet, shaking like a leaf, haggard circles encompassing my eyes, stringy black hair hanging limply around my face, and soaking wet clothes hanging loosely off my shivering form.

"Jane," he worriedly whispers out.

And then I'm kissing him.

This time it isn't my instincts taking over, but rather a need that overwhelms me so wholly, that I can't seem to stop myself from consuming him one last time.

My hands roughly make their way into his short hair, my body pressed so closely to his own that I can feel every contour of his body slowly melding into my own.

If our first kiss was instinctual and hopeful, this one is needy and animalistic.

He takes a step back, I take one forward, refusing to let him retreat to anything but leading me further into his place - shutting the door with my foot.

Grabbing my face, he separates us, a line of saliva connecting us for the briefest of moments - his ragged breaths hitting my face, fluttering my eyelashes, as I continue staring at his swollen lips, picturing myself biting the bottom one, distracting me from the words coming out of the mouth I can't stop gazing at.

"Jane, are you okay? What happened?" He finally breaks through to me.

But I don't want to tell him. Not now. I will. But not now. All I want right now is a continuance, a stay of execution, if you will.

 _I just want to feel something good._

I don't even realize I've said that out loud until I hear him groan. Flicking my eyes away from his lips up to his eyes, I see the flame flickering in his irises, warming the ice currently running through my veins.

Involuntarily, I lick my bottom lip, the taste of him still lingering on me.

And then he's kissing me.

His tongue agonizingly traces the lip I just had in my teeth, his thumbs following the same rhythm on the side of my face, before sliding down, finding purchase on my hips, pushing my shirt up slighting to continue the same movement as before on my hip bones.

I stand on my toes, yearning to reach him further. Releasing every ounce of desperation into that kiss, as if he's the lifeline keeping me from certain death, tethering me to the ground. My heart races underneath my wet shirt. A steady beat that says, "I'm okay." _For right now._ "I'm safe." _For right now._ "He doesn't hate me." _Yet._

With every stroke of his tongue against my own, I'm assured that this is real. But with every slight caress of his calloused fingers against my inked skin, I'm terrified that this is fleeting, unlike the permanent tattoos I'd chosen to inflict upon myself.

I flinch, separating us. Kurt stares down at me, increasingly confused with my actions. I can see the worry etched on his face. And I try to cover the panic creeping up with a sly smile that feels more like a grimace, before interlacing our hands together and leading him back towards where I suspect his bedroom is.

xxxx

 _Thank you for reading! I got this idea in my head (actually the part that first came to me is much further ahead), but I couldn't stop thinking about it, and I hadn't yet seen anyone do something like what I was picturing, so I decided to attempt to take on a fic with several parts to it. So we'll see how that goes._

 _Anyway, please review, let me know if it's even worth posting the other chapters._


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